Letters will go out from him—and a lot of others. On the heels of the Verizon verdict, expect a flurry of lawsuits by holders of patents on the technology that delivers phone calls the same way e-mail travels over the Internet, legal experts and industry executives say.

"We were waiting to see how [the Verizon-Vonage case] was going to work out," says VoIP Chief Operating Officer Shawn Lewis. "[The verdict] has opened up the validity of protecting the patents." There are plenty of VoIP (voice-over-Internet Protocol) patents to protect. The Patent & Trademark Office says there are 2,273 such patents. Many belong to telecom stalwarts like Verizon, AT&T, Motorola, Broadcom, and Cisco Systems. More than 150 patents, filed as early as 1999, were granted as recently as 2007.

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